A PALAEOGRAPHIC COLLECTION, including a NINTH-CENTURY FRAGMENT from Gregory the Great’s Homiliae super Evangelia and a CONTEMPORARY FRAGMENT OF THOMAS AQUINAS’ Summa contra Gentiles [central Europe, 9th to 15th centuries]

A group of fragments that – through a selection of representative medieval texts – show the evolution of European script throughout the Middle Ages, from the transitional period of 9th-10th-century Carolingian minuscule, with its thinner forms and less pronounced clubbing of the vertical main strokes, to the precision and symmetry of the 12th-century bookhand and its mutation into the smaller, more abbreviated and compressed writing of the 13th, and finally to the more angular gothic forms of the 15th century. The present lot consists of:

1) GREGORY THE GREAT (c.540-604), Homiliae super Evangelia, XL, 2-3, a fragment in Latin [France, late 9th century].

Measurements:
125 x 205mm. two columns of 13 lines written in a late 9th-century Carolingian minuscule, the text beginning: ‘[de quo Moyses locutus fu]erat non peruenit; Haec nos fr[atre]s k[arissi]mi’ and ending ‘Noui te ex nomine: Ait ergo de diuite: Homo quidam’.

Gregory the Great’s Homiliae were without a shadow of a doubt one of the best-selling texts of the Middle Ages. Over 400 manuscripts survive, but only 40 of these date from the 8th and 9th centuries. A peculiar textual variant in the present fragment (the absence of a negative that changes the entire meaning of a sentence) can be found in only three other manuscripts of the text – Paris, BnF lat. 12254 and 12255 and Orléans, B.M. 173, all of which are from the 9th century. The script is similar to BnF 12255, which was written in Tours. To our knowledge, THIS IS THE EARLIEST FRAGMENT OF THE TEXT EVER TO HAVE BEEN OFFERED ON THE MARKET.

2) A LEAF FROM A SACRAMENTARY, in Latin [Germany or France, late 12th century].

Measurements:
272 x 184mm. 24 lines written in a late 12th-century bookhand.

3) ATTO OF VERCELLI (885-961), Expositio in epistulis S. Pauli, a bifolium in Latin [central Europe, c.1200].

Measurements:
316 x 223mm. two columns of 42 lines.

4) THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274), Summa contra Gentiles, 68-70, a single leaf in Latin [Paris, c.1270].

Measurements:
269 x 213mm. two columns of 49 lines,
A CONTEMPORARY COPY OF A MAIN WORK BY ONE OF THE GREATEST MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGIANS.

5) A BIFOLIUM FROM A MISSAL, in Latin [France, mid-15th century].

Measurements:
330 x 230mm. two columns of 30 lines.

Bibliography:
R. Etaix, Gregorius Magnus: Homiliae in Evangelia, Corpus Christianorum, CXLI, 1999.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.